Classical homeschooling in Southern California

Planes, Trains, Cars, and field trips!

Someone mentioned blogs on one of the groups I belong to and it made me realize, I haven’t updated this one in a long time! But, that doesn’t mean we haven’t been learning. So I thought I would just do a quick recap of the last couple weeks and look for some pictures to put in at the end. (I also lost my camera!!! So I’m missing pictures from everything that first week, including the christening. So sad!!)

I mentioned before that we were having family come in from out of town. So, we ended up visiting the Bower’s Museum which is a great little museum. It was a little over Malcolm’s head but the adults really enjoyed it. And Malcolm really liked watching the video they had playing on Ancient China, getting to see all the different ways gold is found in nature, and the masks created by the people in South America.

We also went to Pretend City which was the perfect thing for Malcolm. I need to make sure we go here more often and am considering getting passes when money isn’t as tight. Malcolm got to pretend to work a lot of different jobs around a city. He worked in the grocery store, the gas station, as a firefighter, on a farm, a construction worker, at the marina, and he got paid for all of it! He put his time sheet into an ‘atm’ and out popped pretend city money. He was very excited and we didn’t even get to everything they had there. They also had areas for babies 6-18 months old so I think we might go back when baby sister is crawling.

We went to Disneyland once that week as well, but that isn’t as rare an occurrence for us. We have passes and Malcolm loves going. We got to see Buzz Lightyear though and he was so excited since Buzz is his favorite!

And the highlight of this week? The children were christened at the small church near us. Their Great-grandmother, one of the first women ordained within the episcopal church, was the one to baptism them. We feel so honored that she was able to do it. Not only because of her history but also that we named baby Allie after her.

The following week was really quiet, at least for me. Malcolm got to go on his very first plane ride and went back to Florida with his cousin. They let him into the cockpit and he got to play with the steering wheel and even push the throttle (obviously the plane was not running at this time). He was so excited and I wish I could have seen it. He had so much fun with his Aunt, Uncle, and cousin. He went swimming for hours, went to Legoland, rode on a train, and was just spoiled to death.

Of course, the first day back for him was a tough one. He needed a lengthy timeout to realize the rules applied again. This is when it starts to get a bit vague for me so I apologize. We did end up doing I is for inchworm. I showed him a few videos on youtube about inchworms and showed how they moved. He thought that was really funny. And then we (I) learned a new song. Inchworm by Danny Kaye and we watched the video on youtube for that.

We also did J is jellyfish. We got some books from the library about ocean animals. Even though it wasn’t a jellyfish we got the book Humphrey the Lost Whale. Malcolm really liked this story, and it’s a true store about the whale who swam under the Golden Gate bridge and up a tiny river before the people figured out how to turn him around again. Malcolm was especially thrilled because I found a reading rainbow DVD at the library that featured this book. He just kept repeating “Humphrey” over and over while watching it and requested it several times. Very cute. We also make jello jellyfish to eat for a snack which he thought was really funny.

We had two fieldtrips at the time period as well. The first was a tour of the firestation with our nature study group. Malcolm loved getting to see the fire engines up close, seeing all their equipment, and they even took us inside to see their kitchen, beds, workout room, and dispatch area. It was quite a treat!

Then, with another homeschool group, we got to go to Legoland in San Diego. This was also a first for us and Malcolm had so much fun. It was just us with baby sister so he wasn’t able to go on any of the ‘big’ kid rides which I was a little sad about. He still enjoyed doing the baby rides like the boats and train, playing in on the playgrounds, building with legos including a little car that he was able to race with other children. But the best thing about this whole trip was getting to watch him drive his own car. They have a ‘driving school’ for 3-5 year olds so Malcolm was able to drive by himself in his own little lego car. He crashed, a lot. But he had SO much fun doing it and finally got the hang of it at the very end and managed to make it all the way around the track before time ran out. I felt bad for the man running the ride. He was running all over the place unsticking stuck preschoolers who crashed into each other and the walls, Malcolm a large number of the crashes.

Riding the train

Driving his own car!

We have some more really cool fieldtrips coming up so stay tuned! Including picking blackberries, going to the airport, and visiting the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. Here are other cute pictures from our past month!

Spring is here! Its warmed up and we can spend a lot of time outside now.